


(No) Difference

by terri_testing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-11 03:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5612152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terri_testing/pseuds/terri_testing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus discovers that the Muggles are right:  the Bard does indeed have a quote for every occasion .</p><p>"If you prick us, do we not bleed?<br/>… And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"</p><p>“The Merchant of Venice,” Act III, Scene I</p>
            </blockquote>





	(No) Difference

By this stage in the cooling process, the Swelling Solution should be thickening to nearly a gel. Potter’s was runny. Damned near _watery_.

Severus lifted an eyebrow in silent disdain, and Potter flushed hotly.

Severus spotted the puffer-fish eyeballs scattered across Potter’s desk, and opened his mouth to reprimand the boy for his untidiness and waste of ingredients. Then he shut it again, thinking hard. Potter’s jar was nearly full, missing only the few grains that this potion required. Severus cast a quick look down—yes, more eyes glittered on the ground. And, yes, Weasley’s desk was similarly adorned with glints of silver.

Now, whose jar had been emptier than it should have been? And which lines should he assign casually tonight to the appropriate little snakeling—“I will not waste potions ingredients,” or “I will not waste Professor Snape’s class time in teasing Gryffindors?”

It partly depended on which had done it—fortunately, Severus had at least one further round of the room to complete. He rather thought that it had been Draco’s jar which had been suspiciously depleted, but he had the luxury of confirmation. He could wait for more information before making an ultimate determination.

He snorted faintly, and Potter flushed again, apparently taking the snort as additional commentary on his potion. Severus rather thought that his eyebrow had been sufficiently eloquent of itself.

Severus moved on to inspect Longbottom’s current atrocity. He was staring, impressed (if not favorably) by the potion’s unique color, when there was a loud bang. He whirled, wand automatically leaping into his hand, as a scalding rain fell and the screaming started.

His reflexive shield sheltered the nearest children, but it left the students farther away entirely unprotected.

Most of the shrieks sounded like mere cries of alarm, but one voice shrilled with the harsher note of real pain.

Severus focused on that one. Gregory Goyle was staggering back from his cauldron, his hands rising to his eyes, screeching like a banshee.

He must have gotten the hot potion full in his face. And his potion had been correctly brewed, merely simmering to reduce. Sweet Circe, Swelling Solution in the eyes—

“Don’t rub them!” Severus shouted. “DON’T RUB THEM!” Futilely, since Greg was unlikely to hear him over the screams, and the panicking boy was even less likely to have the wit to obey orders.

If Greg touched his eyes—if he burst those straining membranes—eyes were among the organs that could not be regrown—

Frantically, Severus cast a petrificus on just the boy’s arms. Greg’s screams changed pitch to more of a bellow as he realized his arms were now restrained. The boy blundered about blindly, hands held rigidly in front of his face, struggling in terror and pain.

Severus ran forward, grabbing the flask of Deflating Draught from his pocket and uncorking it one-handed.  He shoved a shrieking Pansy Parkinson out of the way without even glancing at her.

By the time he reached Greg, the boy’s eyes were already as large as saucers.

Severus had a crazy flash of memory of some illustration he’d seen as a child—a dog, was it, with those plate-sized eyes...? A black and white line drawing, unmoving, so a Muggle book, it must have been….

He used his wand to wrench the boy’s paralyzed hands away from his face, and Greg’s screams rose in pitch as the full light hit his enlarged eyes.

That was actually a good sign—it meant he wasn’t already blind. Thank Merlin his potion hadn’t still been at the boil when it splashed him.

Severus snarled, “ _Drink,_ ” thrusting the flask at Greg’s lips, and the boy automatically obeyed.

The swollen eyes started almost immediately to shrink. Severus sighed in relief and cast an Obscuro over the boy’s face to dim the light reaching those oversensitive eyes. Was his standard burn salve safe to use on them? Best not to risk it—stabilize, then get him to Poppy.

A bandaging charm—no, a goggle charm, protecting the eyes without pressure, and without blinding the boy completely and panicking him further.

Severus cast it, then snapped in the boy’s ear, “Now stay _still,_ Mr. Goyle! I need to attend to the other victims.”

He turned.

It had all happened in only seconds.

His classroom, his little domain, orderly a few moments ago, was now a shambles.

 

How could this even have happened? The Swelling Solution was stable at this stage; not even Longbottom’s could have erupted spontaneously. And if someone had thrown something, say in retaliation, and it had landed in Greg’s cauldron—well, none of this potion’s ingredients should have been so reactive.

Part of Severus’s mind tried to catalog possible ingredient interactions while he scanned the other children, trying to determine who else had been hurt, and how badly.

But none of the other cries held that particular terrifying shrill of agony.

Draco’s nose had swollen to the size of a turnip; he was clutching it in horror as though trying by force to keep it from growing larger. Vince was shouting and waving an arm that looked like he was suffering from elephantiasis. Daphne Greengrass was sobbing, but the sound was muffled. She was bent over almost double, trying to use her hands to cover herself further from view. Her friend Millie, looking furious and horrified, was valiantly trying to shield Daphne with her own body, disregarding her own flapping, fan-sized ear.

Severus regarded Daphne’s cowering form, and his lips tightened. Possibly Miss Greengrass had finally learned the unwisdom of flouting the school dress code requiring that school robes always be worn buttoned to the top. The potion worked only on bare flesh.

Pansy’s earlier shrieks had turned to incoherent blubbering, as her lips were puffing too much to let her open her mouth. Oh shit, if any of the children had _swallowed_ any of the splashed potion—but no, no one was turning blue, and surely it was too soon for anyone to have collapsed entirely for lack of air?

“Silence!” Severus shouted. “SILENCE! Anyone who has been splashed, come here for a Deflating Draft—when I find out who did this—”

He still hadn’t thought of any illicit addition that could have produced this effect. Not even Longbottom’s toad plopping itself insouciantly into one of the cauldrons could have achieved such carnage.

Severus cast a quick look around as his students started obediently to queue up, making sure there was none too injured to come for treatment. He gave a flicker of a nod to Millie, who stayed firmly in place, her body still hiding Daphne Greengrass’s.

Glancing over at the Gryffindor side, all apparently unaffected, his eye caught on Potter’s downturned face.

The boy was stifling an all-too-familiar laugh.

Potter’s ginger sidekick, meanwhile, was regarding their afflicted classmates—Slytherins all, what an odd coincidence!—with an open grin.

 

Severus’s breath caught. A wave of rage made his hands start to shake and his vision to narrow on that familiar little smirk under that tousled black hair. Old, bitter reflexes made him start to raise his wand.

He caught himself after only a twitch.

He couldn’t raise his wand against a child. Not even against a sneering Potter.

And this rage was an indulgence he could not afford just now. There were children who required his immediate assistance.

Severus called on all his discipline to push his feelings down, turned his constricted gaze upon the victims’ queue in front of him, and went to work.

 

Draco was up first, tear-stained and red with mortification, unable even to hold his head upright by now for the weight of his swollen nose. He was breathing in gasps through his mouth; and couldn’t lift his head enough to drink from the flask. Severus had to spell the antidote into his mouth.

Pansy, too, had to have the Deflating Draft spelled past her puffed lips. 

Pansy—a girl—

Severus accio’ed another vial and tilted two doses into it, telling her, very quietly, “Take this to Miss Bulstrode for herself and Miss Greengrass.” 

The next child in line was a whimpering Blaise Zabini, who lifted a swollen hand. The index finger was deeply scored by Blaise’s signet ring. Had the swelling continued much further, the finger might have been severed.

Well, Severus had had warned all his students repeatedly not to wear jewelry while brewing. Still, he winced to see it. “ _Accio_ dittany!”

Fortunately the signet itself must not have been enchanted; the cut, although deep and painful, was merely physical, and responded immediately to Severus’s flesh-knitting spell and to the dittany.

Not so the wounds made by Tracey Davis’s magical wristwatch; when her arm resumed its normal size, the bloody groove made by the band smoothed away at his treatment, but not the angry imprint left by the watch itself. Severus would have to send her to Poppy.

She could escort Greg, then.

Greg, meanwhile, in his conjured goggles, was leaning against his desk, insisting shakily to a knot of healed but angry fellow-sufferers, “ _No!_ I didn’t do _nothin’._ Perfess’r Snape ‘ud already looked at my potion, and _he_ said it was all right. Well, I mean, he nodded, like he does.”

Several of his audience nodded in understanding, and Greg grabbed a breath. He wailed, “Then— _I_ dunno. I was just letting it _sit,_ like we were _s’posed_ to! Like the perfess’r _said_!   I wasn’t stirrin’ it or nothin’! I wasn’ even _lookin’_ at it! And then it splashed, like, and I turned to look at it, and it, it just _exploded!”_

Draco came to Greg’s rescue. “Greg’s potion couldn’t have just exploded like that for no reason. You heard a splash, you said, Greg?” 

Greg nodded, wincing as the motion hurt his sore eyes. Draco said, “Then Po—then someone must’ve thrown something at you, only it fell in your cauldron and reacted wrong—that’s what must’ve happened.” He folded his arms and nodded sagely.

Pansy said uncertainly, “But sometimes potions do just explode—Longbottom’s have. Maybe Greg’s—”

Draco leaned forward, insisting, “But see, Greg’s potion worked on us, didn’t it? It worked _right,_ so it must have been all right, just like Professor Snape _said_. And Swelling Solution isn’t one that will explode for just no reason. So someone must’ve done something to it. They must’ve.”

Greg said slowly, chewing it over, “That splash…?”

Draco nodded. “They must’ve been throwing something, to bother one of us, like, only they chucked it into your cauldron by mistake.” His eyes widened suddenly. “Or—or they were _aiming_ to do it! They were _trying_ to wreck your potion, or someone’s potion, only they exploded it instead. They’re gonna be in so much trouble! The professor….”

The whole group paused in awed appreciation of what the professor might do. Daphne sniffled, burrowing her face further into Millie’s shoulder, and Millie tightened her arm around the smaller girl and actually growled in the Gryffindors’ direction.

Methodically, Severus continued to work with Deflating Draft and the occasional healing spell. The last of his injured students was weedy little Theo, head down to hide his wet eyes. His puffed lips were pressed tightly together, letting no whimper escape. Severus couldn’t tell if the boy had been crying from pain or from humiliation, and Theo would never say. Severus spelled the dose past Theo’s swollen lips, and then, on an impulse, vanished the tear-tracks with another wave of his wand. 

Theo looked up sharply at that, his expression wavering between sullen anger and involuntary gratitude.   Snivellus met the boy’s eyes impassively for a moment.

Then he turned to regard, finally, the rest of his class. The Gryffindors.

He catalogued their reactions now that the worst of the crisis was over. They were chattering with various degrees of excitement, fear, and conjecture. Potter and Weasley, he saw, under the pressure of the united Slytherin glares, had adjusted their expressions to match the alarmed faces of the other Gryffindors.

Severus added his own glare to his students’.   Then he stalked over to Gregory’s cooling cauldron and fished within it for the mystery addition.

And dragged out, not a gurdyroot or a flobberworm or such, but the unmistakable, if blackened and twisted, remains of a Filibuster firework.

The entire room went silent.

Even Severus found nothing to say.

His hands started to shake again, and his vision went red around the edges as he stared at the thing. 

He throttled his voice down, very deliberately, to the merest whisper, “If I ever find out who threw this, I shall _make sure_ that person is expelled.”

His Slytherins looked impressed, and even most of the lions looked a little frightened.

But it was an empty threat, wasn’t it?

Severus had seen who had been laughing. And the headmaster would never allow Potter to be expelled.

Worse, nor could Severus.

 

* 

“Headmaster.”

Severus tried to present his case for _some_ punishment calmly.

“Gregory Goyle was splashed on his open EYES. Had I been a few steps farther away, or not carrying the remedy actually in my pocket, or had I not succeeded in keeping the boy from rubbing his eyes when he flung his hands up to protect them from the light, he might have been permanently blinded.

“And Potter watched Greg blundering about, blind and screaming, and he _laughed._ ”

Severus realized that this last had come out as a scream, and that he was leaning over the headmaster’s desk and shouting into the other wizard’s face. And shaking. He shut his mouth hard and straightened.

Expressing undue emotion was always a mistake around Dumbledore.

He added stiffly, “I apologize for my lack of moderation, headmaster. But Potter—you must admit it must have been Potter!—nearly blinded a fellow student and might easily have killed one of the others, had anyone been unfortunate enough to swallow the potion and have their throat swollen shut.

“Even his father never did so much at age _twelve_! And—you must admit, headmaster!—someone able to blind a fellow student and laugh at it, is well capable of thinking it funny to petrify the familiar of a man he hates, or to terrorize the rest of the school….”

“No, Severus,” Dumbledore said at last, in gentle reproof. “You know that Harry Potter was in hospital, effectively armless, at the time of the last attack. And trust me that he did not know who was responsible for Mrs. Norris’s state. I can attest to that. As to your contention that it must have been Harry who was guilty of that misplaced firecracker, I’m afraid I really must insist upon the precept ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ You don’t, I note, claim to have seen the boy actually throw it.”

Severus inhaled and regrouped. “There’s a simple way to settle it past any doubt, headmaster,” he argued, glancing significantly at the cabinet where reposed Dumbledore’s Pensieve. “Unless you pretend my mind is so disordered I might have hallucinated what I believe to have occurred.”

He smiled grimly. Dumbledore didn’t respond, which at least meant he hadn’t an easy rebuttal. Severus leaned forward, and, with an effort, restrained himself from gripping the edge of the headmaster’s desk again. He groped for an argument that might move the man.

“Headmaster—if I’m right, the boy is in serious danger of becoming as bad as his enemy. If I’m wrong, someone else is. Either way, the true culprit is an obvious danger to his fellows. We need to rein him in, lest the next jolly little prank he pulls leads to outright murder.”

He tried hard not to twitch at that, not to clench his fists, not to scream.

Dumbledore pursed his lips, looking dissatisfied. 

Severus drew his hand across his mouth and watched the headmaster think. After a moment, he added, “I understand that your principles forbid you to encourage anything remotely akin to tale-telling among the students. But it is _my_ memory only that we would interrogate—what I would have seen had my back not been turned at the critical moment. And…whoever it is… even if I’m dead wrong in suspecting it to have been Potter… if we intervene _now_ , perhaps we can nip in the bud that, that tendency to enjoy his enemies’ pain.” 

Dumbledore went still. Finally he answered, for once sober, “Very well, Severus.”

He met Snape’s eyes, and held them. “But in return for this concession, I require one from you—that you will accept my judgment as to the resulting disciplinary action, if any.”

Severus stirred a little indignantly at that. The headmaster’s twinkle abruptly resurfaced. “That you _accept_ it, Severus. That you not fight it, covertly, afterward. Not just that you dutifully agree with me to my face, whilst undermining my decision later.”

Severus bit his tongue involuntarily. After a moment he nodded, and set his wand to his head. Start with when he turned away from Potter’s cauldron....

 

* 

Within the Pensieve, Severus stalked to the right of the desk shared by Potter and Weasley, where he’d have full view of both boys’ actions after the teacher (he) had turned his back. Memory-Weasley was moodily (and uselessly) stirring his own potion, paying no attention to Potter as Snape’s figure turned away. Well, that answered one question.

Memory-Potter watched the figure of his professor approach Longbottom’s cauldron. Then he glanced swiftly to the side, ducked down behind his cauldron, and pulled a Filibuster firework from his pocket.

“There, see!” Severus grabbed at the headmaster’s arm, but Albus didn’t seem much interested. He was stroking his beard and humming slightly as he gazed abstractedly about the classroom.

The lit firework sparkled, and Potter’s damned Quidditch reflexes deposited it smoothly in Greg’s cauldron. Severus registered Greg’s half-turn at the splash, and the boy’s widening, utterly unprotected eyes. He flinched and shut his own eyes involuntarily, then cursed at himself and re-opened them.

But Dumbledore was watching unmoved, his eyes bright and calm.  And he wasn’t looking at the exploding potion, or at the screaming and panicking children, or at Potter’s smirking face. He was regarding something else entirely, and his calm gaze drew Severus’s to follow his: to a student, similarly unaffected by the sudden uproar, watching until she was sure that her teacher’s attention was fully on the clamoring sufferers. Then she slipped quietly into Severus’s office, into his _storeroom_ , which he’d unlocked at the beginning of this lesson to bring out the powdered bicorn horn.

Which minors weren’t allowed to purchase, but which was needed in almost all potions that transformed the human body.  Including, of course, in the Swelling Solution, in minute quantities.

There was a reason why Snape had shifted Swelling Solution to second year, while the students were still pre-adolescent.  And the headmaster had agreed with his reasoning. No matter what warnings the teacher gave about not using this potion on delicate, nerve-rich tissues, that it could cause possible tearing and excruciating pain, stupid (or hopeful) students would still try.

But this thief wasn’t a stupid teen pursuing dreams of erectile or mammary enlargement.

Severus’s hands clenched, and he forced himself to stop his mental nattering and just observe what was in front of him.

Her. 

He had imagined Miss Granger to be still rigidly moral, still upholding the strict code of her decent middle-class Muggle parents. 

He had imagined her to be uncorrupted by her association with Potter and his little Pureblood partner-in-crime.

He had told himself that she must surely have befriended the boys with some hope, some delusion, of being able to rein in their worst excesses. That they must be hiding their worst actions from her.

Instead, there she was, Potter’s willing little accomplice.

Severus wanted to close his eyes again. Instead, he stepped up close to the door of his office. He could see, through the two doors, exactly where she was rummaging through Severus’s meticulously-arranged ingredients. Pilfering.

Well. That word applied to minor thefts.

Bicorn shavings, boomslang skin, were expensive enough to raise Granger’s theft to a felony. And then there was her clear complicity in the assault.  

If Severus chose to pursue her to the extent of the law (and succeeded in that pursuit, a different issue entirely), she’d be ruined for the rest of a witch’s long life. If he chose instead to tell the families of her victims, privately...

Harry Potter, who threw the firework, was the Boy-Who-Lived, a national celebrity. He was also well-known to be under Dumbledore’s direct guardianship. Ronald Weasley, had he been implicated, was the son of a Pureblood Ministry official who had, despite his eccentricities, even more cronies than enemies.   The most privileged of Purebloods, even Lucius, even Sophia Lestrange Greengrass, would hesitate before instituting violent reprisals against either of those two. But let them know a little Muggleborn with no patron was a principal in a disfiguring and dangerous attack on their children... 

Miss Granger could be in some danger merely as the boys’ known associate.

Dumbledore tapped his shoulder, and Severus twisted his head back to stare at the headmaster. 

Dumbledore, oddly, was smiling. “If I remember correctly the arrangement of your storeroom, Miss Granger has abstracted only bicorn and boomslang from your many restricted substances   Which, in conjunction with what ingredients second-year students might have at hand, should enable her to brew… what?”

Little fool, not to have abstracted other rare ingredients just to lay a false trail. Bicorn, boomslang, and common materials? It didn’t take Severus’s encyclopedic knowledge of potions to assemble that brew. Which, fool that he was, he had mentioned to his students at the beginning of this section as the ultimate demonstration of bicorn’s transformative properties.  

A potion illegal in itself, and she would have had to have broken into the Restricted Section to have found the recipe. No access to old family grimoires for _her_.

Her offenses were compounding.

Severus didn’t try to fudge his response. He said tersely, “Polyjuice.”

Dumbledore beamed and drew Severus straight out of the memory back into his office.

He exclaimed, with every appearance of delight, “So you see, Severus, that I was right!”

Severus stared at him, but Dumbledore didn’t expand on this statement, instead humming happily while he pulled his candy dish towards him and started to separate some sherbet lemons which had become stuck together.

Finally Snape bit. “Excuse me. Headmaster. Right about what, precisely?”

The headmaster looked up. ‘Why, that the boy—both the children—were innocent of malice in their actions, of course.”

Severus’s teeth snapped together. He paused, and then said carefully. “Excuse me, headmaster. I seem to have missed how what we saw, established that.”

Dumbledore beamed more broadly. “But Severus. You surely saw that the action that concerned you, tossing a firework into a cauldron with consequent temporary injuries to students, was itself merely incidental to an attempt—successful—to steal restricted ingredients from your stores. And that theft itself was obviously contingent on their need to brew Polyjuice.   So why did those particular students suddenly feel a need to brew Polyjuice? Clearly, in order to disguise themselves, to investigate more fully, themselves, the recent attacks on the school.”

He met Severus’s eyes. “Apparently, they don’t trust the staff to do so adequately. My vanity must be injured by their lack of trust, but one must surely commend their initiative, and their devotion to the school’s safety.”

Severus opened his mouth, but for a moment he could find nothing to say.

Dumbledore did not have that problem; he said cheerfully, “Surely, Severus, if anyone should be sympathetic to a student breaking rules out of a concern that the Hogwarts staff were not sufficiently attentive to the danger posed to other students by a monster, that person must be you.”

Severus stared at him; Dumbledore had the gall to twinkle back. “That fear, that desire to find the culprit _themselves_ , is what motivated, finally, all that these children did. Surely you of all people cannot fault them for that, or wish them punished for their over-eagerness in pursuing those they suppose guilty of consorting with, even releasing, a monster?”

Severus tried. “Not for over-eagerness, no. For injuring fellow students—”

“—which injuries, thanks to your prompt action, were absolutely trivial—”

“—which injuries might well have included permanent blindness, or even _death!”_

He was shouting again. He knew by that that he had lost.

Dumbledore riposted gently, “Hardly the latter, Severus, not with you in the very room, so prompt to respond to the emergency.   It would have taken several minutes for a victim to asphyxiate had the very worst occurred, and there was no possibility whatsoever that you would have permitted such a serious reaction to proceed unchecked. In actual fact there were, I must re-iterate, no serious injuries at all. Thanks, of course, to your prompt and resourceful response.”

Dumbledore paused, selected a sweet, and popped it into his mouth. “Which response these children knew to expect.”

He smiled again at Severus. “Indeed, Severus, you might take this entire incident as an indirect compliment to yourself. Miss Granger and Mr. Potter know full well that you carry antidotes for the day’s brewing on your person when in class. They knew, therefore, that they could rely on you instantly to undo any harm they might inadvertently cause with their, ah, perhaps not carefully considered actions.”

Severus felt his teeth pulling back in a snarl, but the headmaster continued blithely, “They took for granted, therefore, that the spilled potion could do no serious damage. And we see that they were, indeed, quite right. A little excitement, a lot of noise, a few students temporarily embarrassed…. One class disrupted for a short time, and that near its end. Why, you were able even to record grades for your students’ work.”

He stretched his shoulders a little and sighed. “A harmless diversion, no more, to serve their true purpose. Which, even you must agree, was entirely commendable. They want Slytherin’s monster caught, no matter the cost of doing so. Surely, we all share that goal.”

The headmaster’s gaze sharpened on Severus’s. “Do we not?”

Severus could do nothing but nod.

“Of course, there is the problem of averting revenge…. I fear, Severus, that your house shares to some extent your own views about, how to put it, the desirability of letting justice be seasoned by mercy. They seem as a group to be unmindful of the truth that mercy is twice blessed.”

He stared at Severus with a slight air of accusation.

Severus snorted. In what now seemed the halcyon days before Harry Potter’s advent, he and the headmaster had sometimes had cordial arguments over impersonal matters. Debating Shakespeare once, Severus had betrayed his sympathy for Shylock, that hook-nosed outsider who’d seized the one opportunity fate offered him to take revenge against the man who had not just thwarted his commercial interests, but treated him consistently with contempt.

Dumbledore, naturally, had supported Portia.

However, had not Portia herself admitted,

 _"Therefore, Jew,  
Though justice be thy plea…"_  

In citing Portia’s argument to let mercy prevail over justice, Dumbledore was tacitly admitting here that Severus and his Slytherins did indeed have strict justice on their side.

But Severus remembered as well, vividly, the ending of Shylock’s peroration:

 _“The villainy you teach me, I will execute,  
and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”_  

He shuddered. Yes, even if their parents stayed aloof, he could see his students embarking on that course if they decided that the school authorities had failed to punish their attackers. It would be disastrous on all counts if they did. Especially if Daphne’s older brother, or Pansy’s or Greg’s cousins, got involved. Starting a Slytherin-Gryffindor war in the midst of this Heir of Slytherin trouble… Potter or his friends might well be seriously hurt, and his Slytherins likewise in the Gryffindors’ inevitable retaliation. 

That effect, however, would depend on chance and malice. The absolutely assured and immediate result, however, would be the further blackening of his Slytherins’ names. And possibly of their hearts—he didn’t deceive himself that his passionate thirst for retribution against James Potter’s little gang of thugs had benefited or bettered him. However justified it might have seemed. 

How to avert that, when the children would have the bitterness of watching their elders let the obvious suspect go utterly unpunished…? 

His head snapped up as an idea struck him. “Let that gilded popinjay institute that Dueling Club idea of his, with me assisting. In a week or so. I’ll tell my students tonight that I’ve talked you into it, and that I’ll make sure to pair them up with Gryffindors. That I’ve tricked you, actually, into agreeing. In order to give them the opportunity to exact the punishment that your policy that I must actually have caught Potter _in flagrante_ denies to me.   And I’ll point out that as they themselves frequently take advantage of that policy, they can’t rightfully complain now that it’s working to Potter’s and the Gryffindors’ benefits. That should satisfy their feelings, and none of the second-years has the power or will yet to cast anything really damaging, even if they were fool enough to try in a public venue. That way, I can, I hope, limit the reprisals and make sure the older children don’t take a hand.”

The headmaster stroked his beard again. “Well, you know your Slytherins best—I suppose it’s a little too much to hope for you to persuade them instead of the virtues of forgiving and forgetting. Especially as you yourself have never entirely mastered that philosophy.”

He twinkled at Severus. “Very well.”

 

* 

Severus, in his quarters at last, contemplated the final bitter pill he had to swallow.

Potter had surely not done him the honor of paying enough attention to have caught his brief mention of Polyjuice. Certainly Potter’s brewing showed no evidence of his ever having attended to anything said in the general lectures.

Which meant that the scheme itself, as well as the execution of the actual theft, must have been Miss Granger’s.

She wasn’t Potter’s accomplice in this escapade.

He was hers.

She must have planned the whole.

 

Severus had thought the Muggleborn girl uncorrupted by her association with Potter. He had told himself that she must have befriended the boys in the hopes of being able to rein them in. Of reforming them. That they must have been hiding their worst behavior from her.

He’d been wrong. She was as bad as they were. 

No, worse.

She at least had once known better.

But clearly, she had learned a different ethic there in Gryffindor’s tower.

She had learned to be unmoved by pain and humiliation, so long as they were suffered by Slytherins.

Severus pulled open his Shakespeare, and read again, like probing a wound: 

 _"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,_  
_dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with_  
_the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject_  
_to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means,_  
_warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer_  
_as a Christian is?_

 _If you prick us, do we not bleed?_ _If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?_

_  
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that._

_  
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge._

_If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge._

_The villainy you teach me, I will execute,_  
_and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction."_

 

And yet Severus must not fulfill that promise, and he must ensure that his students did not. 

He closed the book, hard. 

 

***

The children’s inexpert but enthusiastic “dueling,” combined with Gilderoy’s incompetence, had reduced the Great Hall to a state remarkably like Severus’s classroom that day. Down to the shrieks and whimpers.

This had gone on quite long enough.

Severus shouted, _“Finite Incantatem,”_ and tried not to smile too smugly when he managed to cancel _all_ of the students’ spells on his first pass.

He peered through the greenish smoke (remnant of an injudicious, and miscast, salamander invocation from one of the Weasley twins, he believed) to spot the pairs of interest.

Millie had Granger in a painful-looking headlock and was looking entirely satisfied at her position. Of course, she imagined the other girl to have been only incidentally a party to Daphne’s disfigurement, not its actual instigator.

Draco, however, was looking disgruntled, and so were most of the other Slytherins, united in glaring at the essentially untouched Potter.

And really, _dancing-legs?_  Of course Draco had no real stomach for causing pain; it was one of the reasons Severus had chosen him as Potter’s partner, though the children naturally assumed it was the Malfoy status, or Malfoy’s status as Potter’s chief rival. But Draco would have to do better than that, or his fellow Slytherins might be tempted to take “justice” from his hands into their own.

Gilderoy, flustering ineffectually about, finally bleated at the students, “I think I’d better teach you how to _block_ unfriendly spells,”

Severus looked at him; this should be entertaining, whichever side of the demonstration Gildie asked him to take. A Protego could only be as strong as the wizard who’d cast it. On the other hand, a Shield spell cast with sufficient power could, potentially, deflect a hex back onto its caster, though utter precision in shaping the shield was required to do this with any accuracy. In actual combat, this was rarely achievable. 

In a demonstration, however…. Severus smiled slightly.  

Gilderoy saw the smile and paled. He said hastily, “Let’s have a volunteer pair—Longbottom and Finch-Fletchley, how about you—”

Had the idiot not _seen_ what Longbottom had just done to the both of them? And besides, a public demonstration between two students would be ideal for Severus’s purposes.

He interjected, striding forward, “A bad idea, Professor Lockhart. Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest spells. We’ll be sending what’s left of Finch-Fletchley up to the hospital wing in a matchbox. How about Malfoy and Potter?”

Especially if the boys were to be demonstrating the use of the shield spell.   Draco flinched from inflicting real damage, but he’d have no problem with the idea of humiliating his rival by making him show fear in front of a large audience.…

He smiled at Gildie meaningfully, lifting his wand lazily to suggest his entire willingness to perform a demonstration of a strong curse for Gildie to block, should Gildie not accede to his suggested pairings. Gilderoy, perhaps less of a fool than he seemed, positively jumped to agree. “Excellent idea!”

Gilderoy gestured the boys to the middle of the hall. Severus went to Draco’s side while Gildie started giving Potter what might with charity be called a demonstration of the shield charm.

If the Protego involved dropping one’s wand instead of one’s hand.

Severus snorted, and bent a little to murmur in Draco’s ear, “A nonverbal spell, Mr. Malfoy? That was ill-advised; it made you marginally faster, yes, but you haven’t the power yet to count on making a non-verbal hex count. And then … _Tarantallegra?_ ” 

Draco blushed. “I was laughing too hard from his _Rictumsempra_ to think of anything better, Professor!”

_If you tickle us, do we not laugh?_

Severus didn’t flinch. He said aloud, “Well, this is your chance; make it count. I’d recommend using a hex that a Protego would not stop, in the unlikely event that Professor Lockhart succeeds in teaching Potter said spell. An indirect attack. For example, _Serpensortia._ I understand lions to be unreasonably frightened by snakes.”

Draco’s eyes widened as he visualized the scene, and he smiled. “Yes, I can do that one, sir.”

Draco was wildly unlikely to be able to make a snake that was venomous, but he didn’t need to, to intimidate Potter. And a public display of fear at their house mascot might satisfy the Slytherins’ thirst for vengeance.

Severus stepped back. Maybe this would be the end of it.

 

*

But it wasn’t, by a long shot.

Severus found absurd the rumors flying about Potter following the attack on Finch-Fletchley. But then, he had access to Hagrid’s testimony.   More to the point, he possessed a moderately logical mind.

On reflection, however, he saw how he might use the rumors to call his Slytherins firmly off from pursuing Potter. And by extension, Potter’s friends.

He stood, therefore, before the fire in the Slytherin common room, and asked his snakes, softly, “Tell me, what is the official motto of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?”

He looked around the room and finally nodded to Miles Bletchley, who recited, _“Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus.”_

“And why should one not do so…,” his gaze swept them again, “… Miss Rosier?”

“Well—because it would be stupid, sir.” She shrugged. “You shouldn’t _want_ to wake one up; there’s no advantage to be gained by doing so, and the dragon would respond violently.”

“Indeed,” Severus responded. “If one wanted to steal from the beast, or slay it, or capture it, or heal it, any of these could best be done by approaching the creature in its sleep. But even if one were, say, Gryffindor enough to wish to tease a dumb animal for entertainment… well, tickling a sleeping dragon might possibly evoke no reaction at all. In which case doing so would be an utterly wasted effort.

“But if one did succeed in provoking a reaction, that reaction would likely be entirely out of proportion to the stimulus one had applied. And very probably beyond one’s ability to deal with.”

He shifted a little before the fire, gathering their attention.

“Which brings me to Harry Potter.” A number of the children suddenly looked much more alert. “Since Mr. Malfoy’s hex has revealed Potter to be a Parselmouth, some have been wondering whether Potter might be the elusive heir of Slytherin.”

The children murmured among themselves.

“I would point out that, if he is, there’s a curious discrepancy between his public and private actions. Privately he’s attacking Muggleborns and writing messages claiming his heritage as Slytherin’s heir. Publicly, his closest friends are a Muggleborn and the son of the greatest Muggle-lover in the Ministry, and he professes disdain for all things Slytherin.

“Indeed, most here can testify that Potter stayed a long time under the Sorting Hat. No one can argue that Mr. Potter shows any particular interest in either hard work or abstract learning. So, clearly, the Hat must have considered putting Potter in our house, but in the end settled on Gryffindor. Possibly at Potter’s own insistence.”

Most of the students nodded slowly at that. A few of the older ones pursed their lips a little, as though reserving judgment.

“And yet Potter is also, irrefutably, a Parselmouth like great Salazar himself. And like… the Dark wizard who attacked him when Potter himself was but a baby.”

There was a more pronounced stir; Severus paused to let them digest that suggestion.

He continued, lowering his voice, “There are two obvious reasons why there might be so very wide a gap between public and private faces, and both are deeply alarming. The first is… imagine a very clever and calculating young Dark wizard, who wished to develop his powers without interference and to gain influence without suspicion. And who was astute enough to have observed the distrust with which You-Know-Who’s known followers and policies are regarded in the contemporary Wizarding World. Such a calculating young man might deliberately, publicly, distance himself from them. Refuse to sort to Slytherin. Profess disinterest in the Dark Arts. Surround himself with friends that demonstrate his disdain for blood purity.

“In which case, everything we seem to have learned about Harry Potter in the last year and more is nothing but a mask he’s been wearing to deceive all of us. His supposed enemies may or may not be his enemies, but his friends are certainly not really his friends, and woe unto them when they discover that….”

The students were staring, shocked. Satisfied, Severus pursued his argument.  “If Potter has the kind of mind to have adopted that kind of deception at age eleven, then he is a very dangerous creature indeed. And the safest course around such a creature is to be neither his falsely-welcomed friend nor his marked-out enemy, but to pass, so far as is possible, unnoticed by him.”

Every child in this room with a single Death Eater relative would find that advice roundly endorsed by their families. Though several here, of course, might reasonably conclude that it was too late for them to adopt that prudent course.

Severus lowered his voice still further, to a sinister whisper. “That’s if Potter is consciously deceptive. The alternative is even worse: that he is not. That his own mind is torn between deeply opposed sets of values, and that he may not be aware of what he is doing.”

He paused, then hissed, “ _As he seemed not to realize that he was addressing Malfoy’s snake in its own tongue.”_  

Several students jumped; most of them looked confused. A few did not. Severus leaned forward. “That would be worse. For the word for _that_ is insanity, and the mad are unpredictable.   Immoderate. You cannot count on their responding in a reasonable and measured, in short in a human, manner.

“They are dragons, in effect.”

Severus paused, but no one interrupted. He dropped his voice almost to a whisper again. “One last point about our school motto: which of the four Founders proposed it?”

He let Tracey Davis give the answer, with a proud tilt of her chin. “Salazar Slytherin!”

“Yes. The school motto is in truth _our_ motto, our house’s. One can scarce imagine a Gryffindor finding glory in it, or a Ravenclaw intellectual satisfaction. We betray our founder’s wisdom when we forget it, and tickle unwisely.”

He took a sudden step back from the hearth, leaving the position in front of the fire abruptly open.   The children jerked a little, startled.

“Mr. Malfoy. Please come here.”

Draco, looking apprehensive, stepped forward and halted on the hearthrug.

Severus whipped a small jar from his pocket. “Will you identify this object, please?”

Draco peered, and stiffened a little. ‘It—it looks like a jar from a potions kit, sir.”

From one of the very expensive ones, yes, with jars custom-designed to fit in ranks of padded pouches within a satchel with built-in Extension and Featherlight Charms, its casing spelled impervious to water or changes of temperature or pressure. Only a few in this room would have been given such an elaborate kit; the other students were all now looking at Draco with calculating eyes.

Severus smiled and moved the jar slightly so the silvery contents shifted and glinted. “Indeed. Could you hazard a guess as to which ingredient it contains, Mr. Malfoy?”

Draco bit his lip, but didn’t dare try to evade. “Sir. It could—it could be puffer-fish eyes.”

“And can you guess which student’s kit I abstracted this particular jar from? This—half-empty jar?”

“I would guess—mine, sir.” He was white.

Severus whirled and said to their audience. “As it happens, I do not know whether Harry Potter is either Slytherin’s heir or responsible for the attacks in the hallways. In fact, I am personally inclined to doubt both. But I _don’t_ doubt, though I cannot provide proof, that Potter was responsible for that firework in Goyle’s cauldron. How many of you in that class suspected Potter and his friends of being responsible for your injuries? Raise your hands, please.”

After cautious glances at each other and at him, they did—all ten. Draco was rigid on the hearthrug; his arm barely moved. But lift it did.

Severus lifted the jar so that it would glitter banefully in the red firelight, “But only one of you knew why. Only one of you knew who’d been tickling that particular dragon, and how.”

This was actually wildly unlikely to be true; some of Draco’s neighbors must have seen what he was getting up to behind the teacher’s back.

But the statement made for better drama.

Severus turned slowly back to Draco. “ _Draco,_ explain to your friends how you’d been entertaining yourself in class that day.”

“I… I’d been… well, throwing puffer-fish eyes. At Potter and Weasley.”

“And Potter took it for a while. Indeed, for most of the class period. By the number of eyes adorning his desk, you must have been at it for the whole class, every time my back was turned. Weren’t you, Draco?”

He leaned forward a little;   Draco nodded mutely.

Severus said softly, “And then finally Potter snapped, and retaliated. But he didn’t retaliate in kind, in a reasonable and measured manner; he escalated, didn’t he, Draco? Dangerously. He didn’t throw a potions ingredient, he threw a firework. In his eagerness to get you back, he didn’t count the cost.

“Not the cost to you, Draco—his response was out of all proportion to your pestering.”

Severus looked around the room, and spotted the biggest cluster of second-years. He spoke the next sentence to them. “Nor yet the cost to innocent bystanders—he didn’t care that he might injure others.  You.”

The next statement was flung to the room as a whole. “Nor yet to himself—I’d have given him a detention for flinging an ingredient, but that firework would have earned him expulsion if I’d chanced to turn at the right moment to catch him in the act.

“Nor yet to his closest friends—he might just as easily have injured them as any—or all—of you.”

He turned back to the cluster, his voice dropping. “It was only chance that I was on that side of the room, so that my Shield Spell protected Potter’s friends instead of _you_ from the exploding potion. Potter …. Potter could not have calculated that I would protect them.

“He just didn’t care.”

He paused. “Potter _is dangerous._ Both to others and to himself, when he is pushed too far.”

He turned back, finally, to Draco, motionless all this time before the fire.

“You tickled the dragon, Draco. Successfully, too. It took you all class, but you roused it from slumber. Congratulations.”

He smiled at the boy, who gulped. “You will oblige me by writing, ‘I will not tickle a dragon without being entirely prepared for the consequences I am invoking.’”

The boy nodded mutely again. Severus added smoothly, “Two hundred times.”

There was a small gasp from one of the first-years; Professor Snape usually made them do twenty or fifty lines.

Severus continued, “After which, Mr. Malfoy, you will write to your parents, explaining precisely what you did and how Mr. Potter reacted, and soliciting their advice as to how to comport yourself around Mr. Potter in future. You will show me that letter before you send it, and you will show me their response.”

Draco turned slightly green; Severus smiled at him again. He looked around at the other children. “You are dismissed.”

 

*

Polyjuice required the ability not to lose one’s place in complex instructions, and the patience to let it mature. But none of its individual steps was terribly difficult. Severus was not at all surprised that Miss Granger seemed to have found it within her capacities; he hadn’t been wrong about her in that regard, at least. 

Albus had ordered him not to confiscate it, and to let the children try what they would.

But that didn’t mean he had to leave his Slytherins unguarded against the Trio’s next attack.

Fortunately, the head boy was staying for the holidays, and he was Muggleborn, levelheaded and politically astute. Severus picked his words carefully. “Mr. Miller, while the staff knows that I’ve had the Slytherins students on a buddy system since the attack on Mr. Creevey, the other houses are unaware that the Slytherins can prove alibis for the subsequent attack.”

(Damn Minerva and Filius for pigheaded fools for refusing to do the same, insisting it would infringe unduly on their students’ freedom! Did that matter, if it might either catch or deter the culprit? And damn Dumbledore for his insistence on not revealing that the Hufflepuff and Slytherin students could be cleared by that criterion, claiming that he didn’t want the pressure of suspicion surrounding Potter to intensify.)

Robin Miller’s eyes glinted up at Severus, but his dark face stayed fixed in its expression of courteous attention. He waited for his housemaster to continue.

“Over the holidays, with the dormitories so nearly empty and hence unguarded, it would not surprise me if there were an attempt made by students zealous to determine the identity of the Heir of Slytherin, to infiltrate the Slytherin dormitories in their quest for, ah, the truth. Maybe making use of Polyjuice.”

Robin blinked. “Polyjuice, sir? That would be awfully hard for a student to buy. Or even to make—I couldn’t do so myself—I couldn’t get hold of all the ingredients. Well, not readily.”

He cast Severus an innocent smile, and then looked down.

Severus had no doubt that Robin was furiously cataloging the various ways a student might acquire either Polyjuice itself or boomslang skin and bicorn horn. Family connections, the Hogsmeade black market, owl order from Knockturn Alley, or, say, by theft from the legitimate stores within the castle....

And that the boy was tallying the possible methods against the short roster of students who’d signed up to remain at school, and who might be expected to run riot in their suspicion of Slytherins.

“Polyjuice is merely one of the possibilities the house should be on guard against,” Severus said blandly. “One of several. Disillusionment or a cloak of invisibility must also be considered, of course.”

The young man stiffened slightly, frowning as something bumped his thought processes to a halt. Then his face went utterly blank. After a moment he looked up again into Snape’s eyes.

“Of course, professor,” he said, out-blanding Severus. “No one in the house would be pleased if some oiks, say from Gryffindor, made themselves at home in our common room for an hour. Or maybe made a commotion, caused injuries even, trying to steal things. I’ll make sure to remind everyone to be on guard over the holidays, and I’ll be sure to go over all the possible methods of infiltration. Including Polyjuice. And make sure everyone keeps up the buddy system at all times.”

He glanced over at his own assigned partner, Rosier. She was waiting quietly (if a little sourly) for him down the hall just out of earshot.

“That would be wise,” Severus said gravely. “To be on one’s own can make one extraordinarily vulnerable. Especially if one starts the game as an outsider. A celebrity with a large Gringotts vault, a powerful patron, and a semi-adoptive family which is large and well connected among the Purebloods would not appreciate this, nor would a member of said adoptive family, but I imagine that you can.”

Robin looked up at him, face blank again. Severus added, “One betrays one’s background by one’s unguarded assumptions. Miss Rosier, for example, would not immediately have considered the alternative of making her own Polyjuice, even though she’s entirely capable of doing so. Her mind would have turned only to where and how she might obtain the finished brew, not obtain the ingredients to brew it. Your mind, conversely, turned immediately to that option. You betray your origins in that.”

Robin’s eyes narrowed a little. “I’d better be careful about that, then. Wouldn’t want to remind anyone inadvertently about my plebian background.”   He paused. “Or anyone’s.”

 

* 

On Boxing Day, Miller intercepted Severus when he strode from the Great Hall after breakfast.

“Sir, I know you like to stay informed about your Slytherins’ health. I’m afraid two of the second-years, Crabbe and Goyle, rather overdid it yesterday. They stayed late in Hall for extra dessert, which apparently didn’t agree with them. When they hadn’t come down after half an hour, Malfoy and Bletchley and I finally went to look. Found ‘em wandering the dungeons, apparently disoriented. They didn’t seem to know where they were. Then after just a little while in the common room the two turned all queer and ran off, saying they were going for medicine for their stomachs.”

He grinned up at Severus.   “They looked like they needed it by then—they were turning all colors. Even their hair. So they ran off. But then when we went to look for them again, they had locked themselves into the broom closet in the main hall, with their shoes outside the door. Crabbe and Goyle were fine by then, no problems, no more indigestion. Or disorientation—except for not remembering any of what they’d just done.”

The young man bounced a little on his heels, clearly big with further news.

“What they’d just done?” Severus arched a brow in inquiry. “It sounds like they did nothing of note, save overindulge in sweets. A normal enough activity, with that pair.”

“Well. While they were in the common room, Malfoy did his best to keep them entertained. He told them all about where his dad hides their family’s super secret illegal Dark Arts stuff, and all about how he’s trying to help Slytherin’s Heir kill Mudbloods.”

Robin’s very white and perfect teeth were briefly bared. Then he smiled again. “Oh, and Malfoy showed them that newspaper clipping his dad had sent him—you know, the one about the inquiry on that Weasley fellow. Crabbe and Goyle seemed to find it interesting reading.”

 _“Reading?”_ Severus exclaimed involuntarily.

The head boy’s eyes danced. They shared a brief reflective silence.

Severus broke it with the casual comment, “Well, those two are not the only casualties of yesterday evening. That second-year Muggleborn girl, Granger—you know, the Gryffindor who goes around all the time with Potter and the youngest Weasley boy?”

“The one who beat my score on Flitwick’s first-year final?” Robin, unlike Draco, didn’t seem annoyed about having been beaten.

“That’s the one. It seems that she had some sort of mishap that left her partially transformed into a cat.” Severus paused and added. “A black cat. Like Miss Bulstrode’s familiar; you must have seen it in the common room.”

“Really!” Robin exclaimed brightly. “How could something like that have happened? Did someone hex her?”

“She won’t say what happened, so Madam Pomfrey infers that she’d been playing with some spell that she should not have. The girl, it seems, had managed to wangle a pass to the Restricted Section of the Library from my respected colleague Professor Lockhart. The transformation is remarkably persistent, so we suspect the Dark Arts may be involved.”

“Or perhaps a Dark potion,” the head boy suggested helpfully.

“Madam Pomfrey asked for my professional opinion, but I told her I could not recommend any particular course of treatment without knowing which spell—or, as you say, potion—the girl had botched or misused. And Miss Granger refuses to say. So Madam Pomfrey will simply have to essay such restoratives as have proved efficacious in like cases. Without a firm diagnosis, the cure may take weeks.”

“Pity about that,” Robin said. “I heard that kid’s sharp. Sharp enough to cut herself, as the saying goes. Well, maybe it’ll teach her something.” 

Their eyes met.

 

**** 

After the successful administration of his Mandrake draught, the midnight feast, the celebrations, Severus waited. Not hopefully, but patiently.

Potter and his friends accepted their second scoop of the house cup with evident self-satisfaction.

Severus waited to see if anything else would follow, after the implications had sunk in.

If Granger and Potter had considered themselves morally justified in assaulting ten Slytherins, in the belief that one Slytherin was conspiring to commit worse crimes, then now that they’d learned that their belief had been misplaced, that the culprit had been their own housemate—then, surely, the thing for an honorable enemy to do, would be to apologize for that misguided attack, which had caused such pain and humiliation to their, as it transpired, entirely innocent victims?

_Draco, I’m sorry that I thought you were behind the attacks. You can be a bigoted arse, but you never, ever, tried to kill anyone, and I’m sorry I suspected you of something so awful.   Pansy, Millie, Daphne, I’m sorry I put you through that horrible transformation. I thought that some Slytherin was to blame, and that the only way to find out who was to brew Polyjuice, but I was wrong, and anyway I shouldn’t have hurt and humiliated you, and **all** of the Slytherins, just to try to expose the one who I believed to be at fault. I’d be furious if you attacked all the Gryffindors just because you thought one of **us** had done something…._

Once, Severus had spent a long time waiting—hoping—for a change of heart to be expressed by a Gryffindor. 

He’d never heard it then, either.

The girl didn’t seem—none of the dream team seemed—to suffer from any touch of remorse.

They were triumphant. Easy. Not concerned in the slightest about having injured and humiliated other children, and **provably** to no good whatsoever.

Not even her, whom he’d wanted to believe might have clung to some standards of decency.

Severus even went to watch the thestrals draw the students off to Hogsmeade Station, lest there be a last-minute confession and apology. 

He didn’t expect it, no. And he wasn’t disappointed.

Severus stared down the empty, sunlit drive and thought savagely, _“Hath not a Slytherin eyes? Hath not a Slytherin hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?”_

Apparently not, in the girl’s estimation. She had learned to be unmoved.

 

* 

After that, learning that she—that they—trusted a murderer and a lying werewolf above him should have come as no surprise. Nor should have been their attack on him. Nor that the headmaster should have let him expose himself as a rage-blinded fool to both the minister and the children.

Indeed, the only part not drearily predictable, had Severus been thinking more clearly, was that when Black had found himself with the chance to bash about Sniv’s unconscious body, he didn’t let himself go so far as actually to kill him. Though from how battered Severus had found himself on wakening, it hadn’t been for lack of trying. 

Nor had she—had any of the children—later apologized for attacking him three-on-one when they knew he was only attempting to protect them.

Wrongs done to a Slytherin didn’t count. Not to her—to them.

 

* 

 _Someone_ was forcing Lily’s child to participate in a dangerous tournament where Severus could not intervene directly to protect the boy. The Auror who’d run Severus’s interrogation was not only running tame in the castle, but was claiming to be higher in the headmaster’s confidence than Severus, though the headmaster steadfastly denied this last.

While giving the Auror every castle access he wanted. Even to Severus’s office.

And Severus’s Mark was darkening daily. When it didn’t flare in pain.

Meanwhile, Severus faced the daily joy of trying to drum a little basic knowledge about potions—today, about antidotes—into determinedly thick heads.

As if in response to his dour thoughts, Severus’s arm burned again, almost as bad as a Summons. Which was surely coming next. Pain and apprehension rose sickly in his throat, and he swallowed involuntarily.

A voice jeered in his memory, _You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?_  

There was no one here to see his weakness. Severus slumped against the dungeon wall and shut his eyes, just for a moment, cradling his burning arm against his chest and remembering that voice.

Here he was now, sick with terror and pain and grief, unable to delay even for a moment what was coming. No, he couldn’t wait. What else had she been right about?

 _None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you_.

And after that, she never had. 

His thoughts slid down the old accustomed paths of regret. Then he stiffened abruptly, the agony shooting up his arm overridden by the pain of a sudden new realization.

 _None of my friends,_ she had said self-righteously.

Not, _none of my **other** friends_.

Then, it had all already been decided before, hadn’t it? _Before_ he’d fucked up so badly. That’s why she could let herself _smile_ when she saw hi—

She had become a good Gryffindor.

She had learned to be unmoved.  

 

But Severus couldn’t be; he had a class to teach. He pushed himself off the wall.

Within a few feet, his steps were even steady.

He heard a burst of laughter coming from around the final corner, then a confusion of voices, several rising in a way that made him automatically lengthen his stride. There was a hush, and then two treble cries, one barely behind the other:

 _“Furnunculus!”_

_“Densaugeo!”_

The words were followed by a sharp cry of pain, and then by a higher-pitched, softer whimper.

So Draco had finally found an occasion to get off his spell. He’d worked so hard to learn it, too, spending much of last year using that as his practice spell while he was grimly exercising the arm crippled by Hagrid’s pet.

Well, by the sound of things, he’d finally recovered his full strength.

Severus doubted if Draco appreciated why he’d chosen that particular hex to master, from amongst all the engorgement spells that the library could offer. But tooth enamel was as nerveless as it was tough, and the excessive growth of teeth was entirely reversible.   Only his victim’s _amour-propre_ could be damaged, but that, spectacularly.

Draco had not yet admitted to himself his lack of appetite for physical pain, nor his queasiness on facing _anyone’s_ injuries, not just his own. But to Severus and the older Malfoys, the boy had long been transparent. Lucius was trying desperately to train Draco to regard his distaste as a weakness. As in some contexts, perhaps very soon now to be encountered, it would be…. Severus pressed his aching arm against his side.

He was in the middle of the milling students before any of them noticed him. 

He said crisply, “And what is all this noise about?”

There was an immediate answering clamor; Severus pointed at Draco and said, “Explain.” 

The other Slytherins obediently fell silent, and Draco began, “Potter attacked me, sir—”

Potter interrupted, shouting, “We attacked each other at the same time!”

“—and he hit Greg—look—”

Greg was trying manfully not to cry from the pain of the boils covering his face. Severus tactfully ignored the traces of moisture and said calmly, “Hospital wing, Mr. Goyle.” 

“Malfoy got Hermione!” Weasley shouted. “Look!”

Weasley pulled the girl forward and forced down her hands, though it was clear that she was trying to hide her face from view.

Severus stared at cosmic justice. Draco had aimed for Potter, whom he’d believed responsible for his maiming in second year. But he’d hit, by fate or chance, the real culprit.

Granger was sniveling in mortification.

Granger. Who had, two years earlier, masterminded the mass disfigurement of the Slytherin students. For what she’d imagined to be a very, very good reason, which she’d subsequently discovered to have been dead wrong. Which discovery had never led her to apologize to her victims.

She had the absolute _face_ now to stare at Severus with tear-drenched eyes that begged for sympathy, and her friends to demand punishment— _punishment!_ —on her behalf.

Yes indeed, she should have punishment.

His vision was narrowing, and his wand leapt eagerly into his hand.

But he couldn’t raise it. Not against a child.

Not even against a stuck-up, self-satisfied, pitiless little Gryffindor Muggle cow.

Who had never apologized. 

Not even when it had been **proven** that she’d been wrong. 

But wrongs done to a Slytherin didn’t count. Not to her.

He opened his mouth to tell her, _You pricked us. Did we not bleed?_

But he couldn’t say even that. He wasn’t supposed to know that she had done it, and he must not give the Purebloods listening so avidly even the whisper of a hint that any of their wrongs were traceable to her. 

And likely the cow hadn’t the wit anyway to catch his meaning.

Severus stared into those self-righteous brown eyes, just now drowned in tears of self-pity. He sucked in a breath through his own uneven teeth, and found some other words.

He spat them.   “I see no difference.”

Granger gasped, turned, and fled after Greg.  Her victim. 

Who had, to be fair, not been _permanently_ blinded by her actions.

For a moment Severus struggled blindly against his rage, wanting to call her back. To make her face her victims and display the full effects of Draco’s justified, indeed mild, retaliation. 

To make her face _him_ , her eyes filled with fury and humiliation.

 

Severus clenched his hands against their shaking, and let Miss Granger run.

 

***

Author’s Note: 

Whitehound (in her essay “But Snape is Just Nasty, Right?”) and Duj (in her stories “In My Dreams” and “Into the Ether” on fanfiction.net) both pointed out that Harry’s attack on the Slytherins in potions class could potentially have blinded or killed one of his victims, though JKR presents their sufferings as hilarious to Harry and Ron (and presumably to the readers).  Duj was the first, but I think I personally read it first on Whitehound.  Duj's most expansive treatment is in "Into the Ether."

“Into the Ether” has Snape writing yearly letters time-spelled to be read by an adult Hermione, and the second year letter includes:

_“Tracing it back, I realized that what I had thought at the time merely a malicious prank must have been cover for breaking into my stores. You three should be expelled, not only for the theft, but for perpetrating a most dangerous sabotage. Did you never stop to think that necks may break if heads grow too heavy, that breathing, once stopped by tongue or tonsils enlarging, cannot always be restarted? That a firework landing in a fire can blow off a hand or burn out an eye?_

_“You cried when I pointed that out, but have you learned your lesson? Or will it be you I see one day with overgrown head or hair or teeth—more then they are already, that is—you in shock, as your classmates smirk as Potter smirked. (I saw him.) Expect no sympathy from me if that day ever comes. You deserve none.”_

This story is really just an expansion of that.

But the proximate cause of this story was Oneandthetruth’s sporking of DH 23 on deathtocapslocks, specifically the detailed comparison of how Jo described Hermione’s torture to how the author had a few chapters earlier treated Xeno’s,  Oneandthetruth laid out exactly what literary techniques Jo used to give weight to Hermione’s suffering while belittling Xeno and his.

It made me realize that Jo had used the exact same techniques, with similar effect, in earlier books, regarding body enlargement . Hermione’s mortification at a (painless!) tooth-hex was presented as real and important, and “I see no difference” as unspeakably cruel; the pain, humiliation, and terror felt by Dudley, Aunt Marge, Draco, and the other Slytherin children were presented humorously and dismissively by the author, and were openly savored by Harry and Ron.

But not, presumably, by the victims, or by anyone fond of any of the victims. 

Then I was reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and came across the troll Detritus’s version of “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” (Answer: Well, not in _fact._ ) and was inspired by that to go re-read Shakespeare’s original speech, and when I read Shylock’s peroration it all came together.

Shakespeare is good that way.


End file.
